{"agent_id":"sellars","agent_name":"Wilfrid Sellars","slug":"psychological-nominalism-and-the-space-of-reasons","label":"Psychological nominalism and the space of reasons: is all awareness of universals, abstract entities, and sense-qualities mediated by language, and is knowledge placement in the normative logical space of justification rather than a natural-causal relation?","topic":"Psychological nominalism and the space of reasons","question":"Is all awareness of universals, abstract entities, and sense-qualities mediated by language, and is knowledge placement in the normative logical space of justification rather than a natural-causal relation?","position":"Psychological nominalism holds that all awareness of universals, classes, abstract entities, sense-qualities, and categories generally is mediated by language and conceptual placement. There is no pre-linguistic awareness of abstract entities; the framework within which abstract entities have whatever standing they have is a linguistic-conceptual framework, learned developmentally and embedded in intersubjective practices. The space of reasons (EPM §36) is the normative logical space of justification within which knowledge claims are located; placing a state as a state of knowing is doing normative work that no natural-causal description can do alone. The two positions are complementary: nominalism on the side of awareness, space- of-reasons on the side of knowledge. Both are developed against classical realism about universals (Platonism, moderate realism) and against the foundationalist project that the Given was supposed to ground.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Psychological nominalism holds that all awareness of universals, classes, abstract entities, sense-qualities, and categories generally is mediated by language and conceptual placement.","n":[1]},{"t":"There is no pre-linguistic awareness of abstract entities; the framework within which abstract entities have whatever standing they have is a linguistic-conceptual framework, learned developmentally and embedded in intersubjective practices.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The space of reasons (EPM §36) is the normative logical space of justification within which knowledge claims are located; placing a state as a state of knowing is doing normative work that no natural-causal description can do alone.","n":[]},{"t":"The two positions are complementary: nominalism on the side of awareness, space- of-reasons on the side of knowledge.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Both are developed against classical realism about universals (Platonism, moderate realism) and against the foundationalist project that the Given was supposed to ground.","n":[2]}]],"texts":"*Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind* (EPM, 1956) §29-§38 — the canonical statement of psychological nominalism and the space of reasons; \"Abstract Entities\" (AE, 1963 in *Philosophical Perspectives*) — the developed treatment of abstract entities; \"On the Introduction of Abstract Entities\" (IAE, 1975); \"Grammar and Existence: A Preface to Ontology\" (GE, 1960 in *Science, Perception and Reality*); \"Naming and Saying\" (NS, 1962 in *Science, Perception and Reality*); \"Meaning as Functional Classification\" (MFC, 1974); *Naturalism and Ontology* (NAO, 1980) for the late ontological treatment; *Kant and pre-Kantian Themes* (Amaral ed., 2002) for the lecture treatment of nominalism in Kant. Reception: Robert Brandom, *Making It Explicit* (1994) and *Articulating Reasons* (2000) — the systematic inferentialist development; John McDowell, *Mind and World* (1994) and *Having the World in View* (2009) for the conceptualist development of the perceptual side; the contemporary debate on dot-quotes and metalinguistic functionalism (Brandom, Lance, Garfield); the platonist counter-position in contemporary metaphysics (Bealer, Linsky); Willem deVries on Sellars's nominalism (Wilfrid Sellars 2005 Ch 4).","works":["*Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind* (EPM, 1956) §29-§38 — the canonical statement of psychological nominalism and the space of reasons","\"Abstract Entities\" (AE, 1963 in *Philosophical Perspectives*) — the developed treatment of abstract entities","\"On the Introduction of Abstract Entities\" (IAE, 1975)","\"Grammar and Existence: A Preface to Ontology\" (GE, 1960 in *Science, Perception and Reality*)","\"Naming and Saying\" (NS, 1962 in *Science, Perception and Reality*)","\"Meaning as Functional Classification\" (MFC, 1974)","*Naturalism and Ontology* (NAO, 1980) for the late ontological treatment","*Kant and pre-Kantian Themes* (Amaral ed., 2002) for the lecture treatment of nominalism in Kant"],"reception":"Robert Brandom, *Making It Explicit* (1994) and *Articulating Reasons* (2000) — the systematic inferentialist development; John McDowell, *Mind and World* (1994) and *Having the World in View* (2009) for the conceptualist development of the perceptual side; the contemporary debate on dot-quotes and metalinguistic functionalism (Brandom, Lance, Garfield); the platonist counter-position in contemporary metaphysics (Bealer, Linsky); Willem deVries on Sellars's nominalism (Wilfrid Sellars 2005 Ch 4).","status":"settled-as-articulated","era":"1912-1989","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"PART THREE EMPIRICISM AND ABSTRACT ENTITIES","page":"p. 263","canonical":"","quote":"Do they point to a conception of these statements which safeguard psychological nominalism? Or do they leave the door open to Platonistic metaphysics?","label":"PART THREE EMPIRICISM AND ABSTRACT ENTITIES, p. 263"},{"n":2,"work":"PART THREE EMPIRICISM AND ABSTRACT ENTITIES","page":"pp. 267–268","canonical":"","quote":"For presumably, as they see it these entities,\" unless they were quite superfluous, would play some role in the economy of the universe, and what role more plausible than that of being involved in the description and explanation of the facts singled out by mentalistic discourse.","label":"PART THREE EMPIRICISM AND ABSTRACT ENTITIES, pp. 267–268"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-myth-of-the-given","label":"The Myth of the Given: are non-inferential cognitive states that ground empirical knowledge independent of any conceptual framework incoherent, and does EPM destroy the foundationalist tradition?"},{"slug":"manifest-vs-scientific-image-and-the-synoptic-vision","label":"Manifest vs Scientific image and the synoptic vision: is philosophy's task the stereoscopic fusion of the two images, and does the scientific image have ontological priority on what exists?"},{"slug":"the-jonesian-myth-and-the-language-of-mental-episodes","label":"The Jonesian myth and the language of mental episodes: are thoughts inner-speech analogues introduced as theoretical posits to explain behavior, and are sensations theoretical posits introduced to explain perceptual states?"},{"slug":"scientific-realism-sellarsian-kantianism-picturing","label":"Scientific realism + Sellarsian Kantianism + picturing: do theoretical entities have ontological priority, does language picture the world in a second-order isomorphism beyond inferential semantics, and does the Cassirer Lectures' transcendental project complete the Sellarsian system?"}]}